Last Hope
by 9r7g5h
Summary: She did what she needed to do.


**AN:** Not the story I was going to write earlier, but one that snuck up on me instead. I hope you all like it! Just a warning, this is how I think things would have ended if Hero's Duty took place in real life.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Wreck It Ralph. Disney does.

* * *

Gritting her teeth as she pushed her cruiser into a dive, for Tamora Jean Calhoun, the world didn't exist.

It didn't matter that there was a cybug on her tail, the buzz of its wings still audible over the whistling wind that pressed through the cracks in her visor, rattling the metal against her skull as her broken helmet threatened to tears itself from her head. She didn't care that the beacon had finally broken, releasing a swarm unlike any other they had seen in the twenty years they had wandered that god forsaken world, serving as humanity's forgotten last hope against creatures that couldn't even leave the planet they had originated on. Pulling up at the last minute, she couldn't even find it in herself to give a damn that her cruiser was almost out of fuel, the solar panels that had kept it working all this time finally shattered by a stray bullet when she had taken off, trying to draw away some of the bugs that were harrying the last of her men as they fled to the relative safety of the drop pod that had placed them there so long ago.

Her tired lips smirking one last time as the mechanical monster that had been chasing her drove itself into the ground, momentarily becoming trapped in a trench of dirt just long enough for her to tilt her cruiser toward the top of the tower, she took off once more, praying that her ride would last long enough to reach her destination.

"Sarge, I really need you to get your pretty little ass back here. The boys are starting to panic, and while they'll be calm enough while we finish loading up supplies, some of them are more than ready to leave you if you're not here when we're done." Even though his voice was cool and collected over her intercom system, Tamora could hear the worry within Kohut's words, the real, genuine fear that had always been there but that they had both been able to ignore for the last two decades rising to the surface for their final confrontation. "I'd be real upset if we went home and left a beauty like you here alone."

"Afraid I can't do that, Kohut," Tamora replied after a few moments, her eyes scanning the skies around her as she waited for the next assault, swerving around the smaller bugs in an attempt to draw the larger ones to her. She would have just shot them, but she had run out of ammo log ago, and had decided against taking another set with her when she had left. It was bad enough that she was wearing her armor; she didn't need to be holding a gun as well when she finished playing her part. "Guess what the bugs got into last night, when we were all too busy trying not to become dinner for our hungry little guests?"

"Don't play games with me, Tams. I don't care if you're my commanding officer; if I have to hunt you down and drag you kicking and screaming onto this pod, then damn it all but I will." His voice fading under a sudden burst of gunfire, it was for a long, tense moment that Tamora waited for him to speak again, biting her tongue as she searched the air for the specimen that she needed. "I already know that they got at our weapons and into our food stores, if the missile launchers and chicken wings are anything to go off of, but what else? What made you decide that, not even half an hour before we were going to finally get off of this crappy hunk of rock, it would be a good time to go for a flight?"

"One of them ate an extra space suite."

"Shit."

"I know, right," Tamora asked bitterly as she dove out of the way just in time, the two cybugs that had been rushing toward her hitting each other instead. Turning back just enough to watch as they ripped each other to shreds, it was with a grimace as she saw the familiar blue drawings covering their sides, marking them as one of the ones that had gotten at the suites. Her mood lifting slightly as they torn into each other, sending them both tumbling to the ground below in squealing mass of twisted metal and bright green blood, she finally found the bug she needed.

"There you are, big boy," she muttered as she flew right by his mandibles, cringing as his mechanical screech informed her that he was following as she headed toward the top of the beacon.

"Sarge," Kohut said shakily, "that means they can leave."

For twenty years she and her men had fought against the cybug scum, hunting down any that escaped the daily send up of the beacon and unearthing the thousands of eggs that had been laid beneath their feet. For twenty years they had done what they could, cooking those they had killed when their supplies had run out and turning their shells into bullets, fighting for just one more day to remain alive and do their duty of protecting their race. For twenty years, they had lived under the impression that they were making a difference, that they were actually doing something important.

They should have left twenty years ago, for without them, without the sealed space suites the marines had brought with them that made surviving in space without a ship for extended periods of time possible, the cybugs never would have been able to leave their hunk of rock. Without the suites, even they needed an atmosphere in order to survive, the small remnants of their insect origins demanding it where their mechanical bodies did not.

They had thought that they were doing their duty, protecting mankind from the cybug menace by hunting them down and reclaiming the planet. But they had just been keeping their escape route safe.

"I know, Kohut," Tamora growled as she leaned closer against her slowing cruiser, trying to eke out the last bits of speed that she could in an attempt to stay ahead of the bug behind her. "I know."

"Even if we do get out of here, that's not going to mean much if they can follow, Sarge." His voice was beginning to crack, the hopelessness of their situation finally becoming clear within his hushed voice as he tried not to let the others hear him. "I'd rather we all put a bullet between our eyes than be eaten by them."

"Wouldn't we all, Kohut, wouldn't we all?"

Reusing her move from earlier before, Tamora pulled up just as she reached the edge of the tower, the cybug behind her barreling through the glass and metal to create an opening at the very top of the tower. Cautiously lowering herself so that she was level with the hole, she froze as her eyes vainly searched the darkness, trying to find any hint of movement that would let her know in time for her to flee. Finding nothing, she gently pressed against the light built into her glove, her hand shaking slightly as she lit up the room before her.

Her buddy had been impaled on one of the metal beams, leaving nothing more than a twitching corpse for her to fear in that main room. Her real opponent was farther in.

"Kohut?"

"Yes, Sarge?"

"I want you to know that your orders are the same," Tamora said as she stepped down from her cruiser, her footsteps light as she carefully picked her way through the debris that littered the ground before her. Behind her, she could hear the engine of her cruiser cough and whine for one final time before clattering to the ground, just another broken machine in a world where nothing could be fixed. It wasn't like she would be needing it, though. As far as she was concerned, she had a job to do, and there would be no going back until it was done. "Get everyone who's survived onto the ship and take off without me. Go home, and get that dog you've been telling me about. Tell Markowski that he can write his book, and he better choose wisely who's going to play me when they make it into a movie. And tell Green and Johnson that it's the twenty-second century and they need to stop dancing around each other like pussywillows and just get married already. I'm tired of having to deal with twenty years of sexual tension between those two. Have Sullivan get back into law; he always was better at finding a loophole than he was shooting a gun. And-"

"S-stop, Tammy, just stop it," Kohut interrupted, forcing Tamora to pause mid-step as a strangled sob forced itself from him. "W-what the hell do you think you're saying? Y-you're t-talking as if we're just going to let you stay here alone. Well, like hell we are, Sarge! You get back here, a-and we'll find a way to fix this."

"You've been my friend for a long time, Kohut," Tamora replied as she continued to walk, each step bringing her closer and closer to the solution that she had already found. "You know I wouldn't be doing something like this if there was any other way. I _am_ fixing it." Coming to a halt one, final time as the sound of something big, something a hundred times bigger than the cybug that had helped her burst her way into the middle of the cybug nest, moving just up ahead reached her, Tamora gently pressed down on her light, plunging her into darkness as the creature crept closer.

"Kohut?"

"Y-yes, Sarge?"

"Turn off your side of the com system. I don't want you to hear this."

"Not going to happen, Sarge. I've been with you for this long; I'm not going to leave you now."

For a single long, silent, agonizing moment, Tamora thought that Kohut had lied, that he really had left her alone to face this challenge. Blinking rapidly as cool trails started marking themselves on her cheeks, it was with a half suppressed sob that the cybug Queen finally came into view, the glow from its body giving just enough light for Tamora to see its eyes lock up her trembling form.

"Hey Sarge?"

"Y-yes, Kohut?"

"You truly are humanity's last hope and one dynami-."

She never got to hear the end of his sentence as the cybug Queen began to feast.

* * *

_You truly are humanity's last hope and one dynami-_

Softly, gently, whenever the desire to leave their home began to spring up amongst her people, she would push their minds toward other thoughts, bending their wills to her own as she tried to fulfill her duty.

'Food,' she would demand, the hissing of her tongue as it tried to form the foreign words a code they had long come to know, immediately rushing to fill her stomach so that they themselves would not be on the menu. She ate whatever they brought her, gorging herself until their need to explore the little far away stars had abated, leaving them to destroy their own little planet on their own.

_You truly are humanity's last hope and one dynami-_

'Danger' she would call whenever the spark grew bright, fixing each other within their minds as she struggled to keep control over her constantly shifting empire. A war would start, cybug against cybug as they thinned their own numbers, each trying to protect its queen from the enemy it perceived in its brethren until few others remained. Even these would remain wary of each other, marking out their own territories with her in the center of their world. She was their queen, and they would do what she bid.

_You truly are humanity's last hope and one dynami-_

But sometimes the spark would ignite, left unsuppressed for far too long, hidden before she could hunt it out and destroy their need to infest the other planets like they had their own. Their passed on mutations calling out for them to fly among the stars, promising more than they could ever receive on their little piece of rock, she would swallow her sick and do what she knew she had to.

Uncurling herself from her protective ball, the only form she allowed herself to take when this was unnecessary for keeping her cybugs in line, Tamora would lay herself out before them and release the pheromones she had been holding back, an open invitation for any who stayed to be a part of the next generation. Sinking her teeth into her claw, she would remain silent for the days that the mating frenzy lasted, forcing her mind as far from the eggs she could already feel beginning to come alive within her as each cybug took its turn, its desire to leave its home finally dying as it secured its lineage within its queen.

_You truly are humanity's last hope and one dynami-_

On a planet with no name, where a top secret experiment had gone horribly wrong, one woman gave everything she had to be humanity's last hope.


End file.
